Fairytale
by Schildkroete
Summary: Slash. MickeyDoctor 8, some MickeyRose. Once upon a time there was a boy from Earth who met a man from the stars.


The first time Mickey Smith fell in love he was seventeen years old. He tells Rose this when she asks him about his first love. Other things he doesn't mention.

-

She asks:

"Was she pretty?"

He says:

"In a way."

She asks:

"Was she clever?"

He says:

"Very clever."

She asks:

"Have you been going out?"

He says:

"We went to places together, but I don't know if we arrived in the same location."

She asks:

"Was she in your class in school?"

He says:

"No. Much older than me."

She says:

"Ah."

-

Once upon a time there was a boy called Mickey. When he was very young his father disappeared and his mother left him with his blind grandmother. One day Mickey was walking home and he came across a blue police box he'd never seen before.

In front of the box a man was sitting on the ground. He was dressed in weird clothes and his hair was long and curly. The man was about twenty years older than Mickey but the eyes that looked at him were at least a hundred years older then him.

"Are you hurt?" asked Mickey, for he could not see why the man would be sitting on the hard ground.

"I am merely tired," said the man, and smiled.

"Who are you?" asked Mickey.

"I am an alien from the future and I have come here because I need a break from my usual life full of chaos and destruction," the man didn't say, but many years later Mickey Smith sometimes thought that he could have.

"I am lost," the man didn't say. "I am a solider who's losing a war and my planet is already burning."

"I am a traveller, but my car broke and I'm stuck here until I can fix it," the man said.

"Maybe I can help. I'm good with mechanics," said Mickey.

"I don't think so," said the man. "It's a very special car."

-

The next evening Mickey met the man in the street, his arms full of flowers. He went to the bridge and Mickey followed him and watched as the man threw the flowers into the river, one by one.

"For those who died," he said.

Then Mickey shared his lunch with him and the man offered him sweets from a bag and they watched the sun set in silence.

-

"Did you fix your car?" asked Mickey when he met him in a café and the man shook his head and said:

"I'm not in a hurry."

"Don't you want to go home?" asked Mickey.

"I do. But as long as I don't return home there will be a home to return to," said the man.

"I don't understand," said Mickey.

The man looked out of the window into the street.

"Eternity is fragile," he said.

-

The man stayed for weeks, but Mickey couldn't tell exactly where he stayed, just that he was somehow always there. He began to carry an extra pack of lunch around for the man never seemed to have any food.

His smile was always happy and his eyes were always sad, and one day Mickey took him to the movies to cheer him up and in return the man treated him to diner. When Mickey realised that they looked like a couple he got scared and angry, for he was young and insecure and liked girls. He snapped at the man for no reason and the man looked at him with eyes full of confusion and hurt and didn't understand.

Mickey left and made sure not to see him again.

-

When he hadn't seen the man for three days Mickey began to feel guilty and thought that he should apologize. When he hadn't seen him for four days he realised that he had fallen in love and he became very afraid and vowed to himself that he would never again go to see him.

After he hadn't seen the man for a week he met him in the street, beside the police box, and the man beamed at him as if nothing had happened and Mickey was lost.

-

This is not a fairytale.

-

Rose asks:

"Did she break your heart?"

Mickey says:

"Yes."

Rose asks:

"Did she know you loved her?"

Mickey says:

"I don't think so. I never told."

Rose asks:

"Did you ever kiss her?"

Mickey says:

"Once."

-

Once upon a time there was a boy called Mickey, and one summer he spend every evening sitting on the ground in front of an old police box with a man that came from (outer space) nowhere.

And Mickey would listen and the man would tell stories that had no meaning. History as written by a five-year-old.

"The thing with forever is that once it ends it chases to exist. Something that ends isn't forever. And so it never was forever and never was at all."

Mickey didn't pretend to understand.

"There is no such thing as forever," he said.

"There should be," said the man.

-

"When will you be going home?"

"Soon."

"I think I might miss you a bit."

"You won't."

"That's not for you to decide."

"That's for me to know."

"Will I see you again?"

"You won't have seen me at all."

It didn't make sense. And Mickey took all his courage, for courage got rewarded in the world of stories and said:

"Stay."

And the man smiled at him and said:

"I can't."

And Mickey closed his eyes and pulled him close and kissed him. And the man (the Doctor) made a startled noise and his lips tasted like stardust.

And Mickey let him go and said again:

"Stay!"

And the man smiled his sad smile and said:

"I am not even here."

This wasn't a fairytale, or maybe it was just lacking a princess. Courage was just courage, leading him nowhere.

The man left and Mickey never saw him again.

-

And Mickey never told anyone about the man from (the stars) around the corner, and then a girl he'd know all his life found her way into his heart and he loved her dearly and for a while he was happy with his ordinary little life on planet Earth and though she was as well.

And the girl he loved met a stranger from beyond the stars and left in his blue police box, left him behind with another fairytale that wasn't and didn't return for a year.

And then she left again to save the stranger's life, for staying on Mickey's planet wasn't enough anymore and maybe it had never been. And as always he waited for her to return because maybe she would, if not to him.

And she came back and so did the stranger, in their magical phone box, only he looked different now, and moved different and sounded different but was still the same and Mickey began to wonder. (Though he had known all along.)

Rose was the princess and the Doctor her knight. There was no definition for roles like Mickey's in any fairytale he knew.

-

They're sitting in a café, and Mickey wonders if the Doctor even knows it's not the first time. The Time Lord is staring out of the window into the setting sun and he looks the same, despite everything.

Once Rose returns they will be on their way, leaving him behind because it is easy. Mickey watches the Doctor and thinks: _You always take from me and never give anything in return._

And he loves Rose and would give up everything for her happiness, even her, but it could have been different, in another life.

And so he says, for he has to know:

"I could have given you forever."

The Doctor looks at him through a stranger's eyes that shine sadly in a smiling face.

"No," he says softly. "But I'm sure you would have tried."

-

December 14, 2007


End file.
